LFYO's 2025 Year in Review
What We Accomplished, How We Operate, and Who Supports Us
From mentoring programs at Columbus City Schools to financial life skills summer camps to empowerment-based workshops for high-need communities, LFYO impacted the lives and legacies of over 800 Central Ohioans in 2025. Our template for success is quite straightforward: place at-risk populations in “simulated” learning environments where they can experience — up close and personal — their future today. No cap! Through a partnership with the Funderburke Institute of Financial Empowerment (FIFE), my wife Monya and I have created more than 50 apps that make learning fun, automatic, and unforgettable for participants while using an iPad that we provide. Here’s why this playbook is effective on three fronts to transform the life prospects and legacy pathways of disadvantaged communities.
First, we take them up to a better place before we transport them out of a bitter space. With an emotional safety net firmly below to ease their fears on the way up! You see, poverty’s clutches are debilitating because the optics are incredibly painful while being stuck and stranded inside the economic matrix. Broken homes. Blighted buildings. Bottled-up dreams. Yep, boxed in with no way out. The remedy? Paint a beautiful portrait of what could be in an exciting, game-based setting that amplifies participants’ visuospatial framework and navigational aptitude. With the right motivational incentives and personal investments, their possibility filter is bound to improve.
Second, we help vulnerable youth and young adults upgrade their semantic (or internal-dialogue) skills. Words matter — a lot. This may seem trivial to those firmly entrenched in the successful class, but assisting fourth- and fifth-grade students from inner-city backgrounds with their word choice can literally reroute their world course. For the better! “Cannot” turns into “already done.” “Give up” turns into “keep going.” “Too hard” turns into “super easy.” Their newfound belief provides immediate relief. Why? Because a competent heart produces a confident mouth. What an awe-inspiring transformation to behold as facilitators and cheerleaders.
Third, we hold at-risk communities accountable for the growth gains they achieve from one session to the next. Or as my good friend Gerry Hammond often says, “To be counted on, one must first be accounted for.” In empowerment parlance, Hammond’s quote carries a hefty price tag for those on the receiving end of a “free” service: whenever you’re given life-transforming information (in a workbook, through a program, or from a mentor), you’re responsible for the instructions that follow. And the participants we have the privilege of serving can’t ever say, “We were never taught or shown a better way.”
Wrapping Up 2025!
Thank you LFYO supporters, corporate partners, and Coach Jim Tressel! Please click the link below to check out highlights from our amazing 2025 fundraising luncheon at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse. Blessings to you and your loved ones in 2026.
